


Grazed Knees

by the_moonmoth



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-07-18
Updated: 2007-07-18
Packaged: 2017-10-12 17:00:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/127063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_moonmoth/pseuds/the_moonmoth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What was the point of pushing at the boundaries simply to know how close they were?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grazed Knees

**Author's Note:**

> This story is well over a year old by now, and I haven't posted it before because I've never been satisfied that it's complete. I'm so far out of the story now, though, that I'm never going to be able to make additions or changes, so I think it's probably time to just let it go. The inspiration for this fic comes from a really lovely music vid created by Di called "Right Beside You" (I'm sorry, I've lost the link), set to Snow Patrol's "Run". The lyrics "light up, light up, as if you have a choice" kept running through my head, and I guess this fic is me trying to figure out what that means, exactly.
> 
> Spoilers up through HBP.

Sirius's life (Remus often thought) was quite enviable in its neatness. Everything had a place, a function, everything clear-cut and well defined; nothing muddled or leftover or superfluous. For example (first, the abstract):

Family = bad. Categorically, irredeemably. To be resisted, rebelled against, abused, run away from, forgotten about and hidden from view. (Oh, how that would come back to haunt them all).

Hogwarts = home. Unequivocally, incontrovertibly. His element, his realm. The way he looked walking down the corridors, like he owned it all, like he had always and would always be there. Flitwick's delight and Dumbledore's amusement and the way McGonagall twinkled at him even as she was giving him detention.

Gryffindor = the righteous. Unambiguously. Dispensers of justice to the wicked, the unfortunate, and the simply annoying. Slouching on the comfy chairs, holding court by the fire, planning mischief, burning brightly.

Slytherin = the enemy. Definitively. All things dastardly were it, and it was all things dastardly. Deserving of no mercy, and receiving none at his hands.

(Next, the concrete):

Peter = acolyte. Assistant. Follower. The beneficiary of Sirius's (and James's) benevolence (when they felt like giving it; Peter didn't seem to notice when they didn't).

James = friend. Brother. Perpetual, intrinsic. The way they laughed together. The way they thought alike and said the same things at the same time. The way they belonged, in some indefinable way, to each other.

And Remus. Remus = ...

Remus = lover.

No one could dispute that Sirius was arrogant (and handsome, and self-assured, and imperious, and affectionate, and ridiculous, and loyal, and irritating, and everything, to everyone, ad infinitum). Having studied him so closely, for so long, though, Remus was fairly certain he was the only one to understand that it all came from this: there were no grey areas for Sirius, no overlap, no reason to ever question himself.

*

It happened because Sirius wanted it, and because Remus didn't say no. Sirius clearly had never expected him to and Remus... after four years, Remus still hadn't believed that he could refuse his friends anything and still have them afterwards.

They were all so young, and never more beautiful ( _ah, retrospect,_ Remus would come to know it well). Even Remus, the silver of the old scars, the ragged red of the new, secretive and scared, but so innocent. And Sirius... Sirius knew what he was and still wanted him. Sirius touched him with tender, gentle hands. Sirius kissed him and brought his body to life in ways only the wolf had had a vague idea about. Sirius held him when the moon waxed dangerously round and Remus felt like he was unravelling, pulling their bodies close, tangling them up so Remus couldn't tell them apart at moments. So that he could almost imagine a different body, where Sirius made up the parts he was missing.

But ultimately, the picture would never be complete, never be whole (and Remus occasionally wondered if this was somehow to do with his own incompleteness, if in some way he could blame it on himself) because Remus = lover. The one to be petted, comforted, aroused, protected. That was his place and he fit seamlessly into it. The one to be fussed over but ultimately disregarded. The one to be intimate with, but not share intimacy. The one in Sirius's bed but not (Remus liked to tell himself he'd always known) the one who had Sirius's heart. And this is precisely how Sirius wanted it -- clean lines, like his lovely face.

Remus, as he told himself, had known this all along, so what was the point of pushing at the boundaries in the first place, simply to know how close they were?

*

Remus was often tired, often in pain, and Sirius was soothing. But Sirius was also, now and then, unpredictable and a bit of a crazy bastard.

The prank was a good prank. Snape fell for it, certainly. Yes, so very funny, in fact, that Remus shook with laughter late at night.

Sirius was... not sorry. But Sirius was also not around, afterwards, locked away doing penance with an icy McGonagall. It was James who sat with him in the infirmary the next day -- James who brought him lunch as Madam Pomfrey treated his newest wounds, avoiding his eyes and talking too much about nothing at all. Peter came too, baffled and skittish, always looking over his shoulder.

They were fine because Sirius wanted them to be, because he wasn't sorry and wouldn't give an apology, and because Remus didn't say no, and didn't ask for one.

*

"I hate this," Sirius would say, "I hate this hiding. I want people to know. I want to shout it out in the great hall! I want to hold your hand and kiss you in the corridors, where they can all see."

Remus would let him say these things, because he understood that Sirius said them in the full knowledge that Remus would never let him actually do any of it. Sirius liked his grand gestures, whether it was putting Snape in his place or planning James's birthday party or declaring his love (quietly, exquisitely) for Remus on Valentine's Day. But Remus had always known they were given in much the same way as Sirius cast his magic (or did anything, really) -- effortlessly, carelessly, with very little thought gone into it (though still coming out magnificent).

He would catch Remus up when they were alone in the dormitory, throw his arms around his neck and lean in close. "I'm in love with you, Moony," he'd whisper, breath warm against Remus's cheek, his ear. "Mysterious Moony," he'd whisper, and Remus could feel his grin, "show me the spell. Show me how you do it, so I can do it to you, too." Remus would laugh and kiss him to make him shut up, and hide his face so that Sirius wouldn't see.

Because Remus knew that, when they finished school, it would be the end of the affair. He was there, and he fit, and that was why, but that would no longer be true outside of those enclosing walls. Sirius's neat little life would have no place after Hogwarts for a persistently exhausted werewolf who loved him more than he knew what to do with. Remus had been expecting it for so long he found he had come to look forward to getting it over with.

*

Remus barely remembered his first day at Hogwarts. Mostly, he remembered staring up at things in bewilderment -- the train, the castle, the ceiling of the great hall. He does remember Sirius Black, though, voice piping out over the bustle of the feast, ordering a bigger kid to pass him the potatoes. It had earned him a cuffing, and raucous laughter from the boy opposite him (who turned out to be James), and Remus, for some reason, had smiled to himself.

Remus remembered the ensuing Potter vs. Black food fight (the first of many -- final count 8-5 to James, who had always been wily), and his astonishment at finding himself with them in McGonagall's office afterwards, having somewhere along the way decided that throwing pumpkin juice over the pair of them was the only way to stop them losing house points before classes had even started. Peter was there too, but Remus didn't remember meeting him until later; barely remembered James, really, because Sirius was covered in juice and had potato in his perfectly groomed hair and was failing to stifle an ear to ear grin, and Remus couldn't take his eyes off him in the flickering candle light.

*

"One day, Moony," Sirius would say, lying in Remus's four-poster bed with the world shut out by the heavy, red curtains, "We'll be done with this place. We'll get a flat together in London or something, and then it'll just be us, like it should be."

Sirius would say that, and run his fingers through Remus's hair so that Remus wanted to melt right into him. But the world was shut out by the curtains, and Sirius had always liked his grand gestures, and Remus never believed that a) it should be that way, or b) that it ever would be. When Sirius had left his family home for good that summer, he had gone to live with James; when they left Hogwarts and Sirius bought a flat, Remus moved in to his Grandmother's old cottage.

*

"Remus?" Sirius stood at the crack in the bed curtains. Remus blinked up at the ceiling, but couldn't bring himself to speak.

Silently, Sirius slipped forward and onto the bed, under the covers. The curtains closed behind him with a soft _fump_.

"Remus?" he asked again, reaching out with cool, tentative fingers to touch Remus's shoulder. "You okay?"

"Yes, I'm fine," Remus said, though his voice came out a low, hoarse whisper.

"Good," Sirius whispered back, bending his long legs to tangle his cold feet with Remus's. He reached out again, pale fingers in the dark, and traced the furrows in Remus's forehead until Remus relaxed and they went away.

He was almost asleep, drifting on the edges of a dream, when he felt Sirius moving. The mattress dipped as Sirius leaned over, and Remus felt warm breath, and then a kiss brushed at his temple. "We'll never tell," Sirius murmured, still close. "You don't need to worry anymore. You're safe with us. We'll never tell on you."

When Remus breathed in it hurt a little because his throat was suddenly constricted and everything from that day was still so fresh and raw. He rolled over and buried his face in Sirius's narrow chest.

"You're one of us, Remus," Sirius whispered soothingly in his ear, wrapping thin arms around his back. "You'll always be one of us. We'll protect you, I _promise_ , Remus. We'll always be together."

*

Sirius would say, "I don't understand," and, "Why are you doing this?" and, "What have I done?"

Sirius would say that, and it made Remus want to laugh (and also, maybe, cry), and ask, "Isn't it obvious?" but instead he just stared in mild-mannered exasperation, and eventually allowed the gnarled cottage door to open and Sirius to come in. Eventually, made him tea and took him to bed.

Sirius kept coming, and Remus kept letting him, because even after seven years, Remus didn't believe that he could refuse his friends anything and still have them afterwards. And he understood that, sooner or later, Sirius would work it out for himself.

("Do you still love me?" Sirius would ask, a strange confusion passing over his face, and Remus never said no.)

*

When Remus was six-and-a-quarter (just less than, in actual fact, but these things were important to him then), Fenrir Greyback bit the infant-soft flesh at the top of his right arm, and turned a well-mannered, intelligent little boy into a monster. It seemed, at the time, like the end of the world (though, of course, it wasn't).

Remus looked back on that event not as the end of the world, nor even as the end of his childhood, but as the end of a very short string of decisions he would make in his life. It seemed to him that, from the moment Fenrir's jagged teeth broke his skin, all opportunity to decide his own fate had been taken from him, and all that was left for him to do was simply live out the few narrow choices left, which weren't really choices at all.

*

A year after leaving Hogwarts, Remus moved his things into Sirius's flat. It happened because Sirius wanted it, and because Remus had run out of resolve. He never completely unpacked, though, and if Sirius noticed (which he undoubtedly did), he never said anything.

Remus was often tired, often in pain, and the work he did for Dumbledore provided little opportunity for proper rest. They would sit at the kitchen table, unable to talk about what they had been doing because the flat was too unprotected, talking instead of James's impending wedding, the Quidditch league, whose turn it was to get more porridge oats. The weather and the state of the roads. And every day, Remus felt his weariness settling on his shoulders like a heavy winter cloak.

It was even more apparent to him now, without the others to readily take their places, that the gaps were tremendous. Stubbornly, Sirius neglected to see it, and Remus wouldn't push simply to see how soon he could bring it all crashing down, but all the same those boundaries had got so close all he could really do was stand still and watch.

They would sit at the kitchen table, unable to talk about their work and so talking about nothing at all. Eventually, they stopped sitting at the kitchen table, too, and when Remus's duties didn't keep him out late, he began to find other reasons to delay himself from returning home. At the back of his mind, he wondered if this was how it would be, if this was how Sirius would finally do it, a slow, dreadful push, forcing him away. Eventually, one night, he was unsurprised to find the bed empty when he slipped silently into it.

*

James's son was born the same summer that Remus turned twenty-one, a tiny, furious bundle of life; a gut-punch reminder of everything that was at stake.

"It's not, I mean, I knew before," James said to Remus that November, "but I never really understood, how fragile it all is."

They were in the Potters' small living room, and it seemed to him that James was pleading with him as he looked from his son's sleeping face to Remus. Lily's shrewd green eyes seemed to bore into him; Peter looked away, sipping his fire whiskey with the worried frown he always wore those days; James, cradling the baby so carefully in his arms, was trying desperately to ask Remus something that he wouldn't come to understand for nearly fourteen years.

Sirius was away, on Dumbledore's orders, and Remus didn't understand, didn't understand at all, and closed his eyes against the counsel he thought intended in James's words, in Lily's sharp scrutiny, in Peter's concerned gaze. But when he closed his eyes, he could still see the shuddering light of the fire, red through his eyelids.

*

Remus knew (distantly) that besides the fear and the exhaustion and the seeming hopelessness that shaped their lives, something was wrong with Sirius. He awoke, sometimes, to find Sirius sitting in the chair in the corner, staring at him. (Sometimes, in his sleep, he would dream of cool white fingertips tracing the lines of his forehead.) On such nights, Sirius would always be gone before Remus awoke the next morning, and sometimes, when Remus hadn't heard him come in either, he would question if it had ever happened at all.

The last full moon before James and Lily went into hiding, the transformation was particularly terrible. The autumn moon hung fat and yellow in the sky and the wolf howled and howled to get out of the tiny room. Padfoot, locked in with him, growled and wrestled against sharp claws, questing teeth, and for the first time since their adolescence they drew each other's blood.

Later, the wolf laid with Padfoot by his side, too weak to move but too agitated to sleep, and when the sun rose and he was Remus again, just lifting his head to look at the wreckage he'd caused made him want to howl again in pain. Padfoot whined and moved stiffly to rest his head on Remus's chest and Remus realised with a twisting in his chest that that was the closest they'd been in months. He twined his fingers deep into the shaggy black fur, hands clenching tightly, and wished both that Sirius would transform back into himself, and that he would stay as Padfoot.

He fell asleep there on the floor, and awoke in the late afternoon to find his wounds wrapped, a pillow under his head, the duvet thrown over him, Sirius gone. He got up, and got dressed, and when in the bathroom he looked up and caught grey in the hair of his reflection, something in him felt that something had to give (the one time in his life Remus Lupin ever made a successful prophesy).

That evening he got an owl about the Prewetts' death, and a week later Lily and James took their son and hid their secret in Sirius's soul.

They had stopped sitting at the kitchen table, and Sirius had stopped asking when Remus would be home, and then Sirius had stopped looking Remus in the eye, and they all but stopped talking under the weight of everything they weren't telling each other, until the day when Remus stopped breathing, and Sirius laughed for the ministry cameras.

The only thing that Remus could think, in the whirlwind that followed, was that Sirius could be, now and then, unpredictable and a bit of a crazy bastard.

*

Sometimes, in the middle of the month when he felt his strength seeping back, Remus stayed up late so that he and Sirius were the last ones left in the common room. Sirius didn't believe in sleep in the same, determined way muggles didn't believe in magic, and often prowled around the common room long after everyone else had gone to bed, plotting or studying on the sly or simply working off energy, Remus didn't know. At times he would talk James into some scheme, and they'd disappear under his invisibility cloak to goodness knew where (Remus stopped asking after he got his prefect's badge), returning long after he and Peter had collapsed into sleep. But most of the time it was just Sirius, doing whatever Sirius did, with the occasional addition of Remus, in the middle of the month, when he felt his strength seeping back.

Remus would work and Sirius would sit nearby, quiet and still for a time (as still as he ever got), leg dangling over the arm of the chair, amusing himself with charming the spiders to twice, three times their size, or transfiguring the flames of the fire to ice and watching them melt back with a sizzle. Later still, when the fire had burned down (or gone out, if Sirius had been messing with it) and Remus was fighting to keep his eyes open, Sirius would come and sit by him, wrap an arm around his waist and rest his chin on Remus's shoulder, lazily conjuring tiny stars that floated up around their heads to the ceiling to form the constellations Remus was trying to memorise, or wordlessly correcting Remus's sleepy mistakes with little taps of his wand on the parchment.

Remus couldn't say why he stayed up on nights like this, forgoing much needed sleep to sit wordlessly with Sirius. Only that, for once, it seemed to him not to matter that they said nothing to each other, because at least if nothing was said, nothing stupid or pointless or insincere had to fill the gaps, and Remus hated that more than silence.

Once, Sirius told him, "I like the feeling that it's just us in this big old room. I like it that we're not touching but we _could_ be, that I'm not going to kiss you, but I _could_ , if I wanted to." And just to annoy him (and remove that haughty set from his mouth), Remus leaned over and kissed _him_ instead.

But he thought he understood, for that moment at least (although it slipped away from him afterwards, like sand through his fingers, through the hourglass).

*

Sirius was... not sorry. But Sirius was also not around, afterwards, locked away for life in an icy prison, and it tore Remus apart in a way not even the wolf had ever managed.

After they were all gone, dead or imprisoned, Dumbledore came to the place where Remus had sat, unmoving, for two days, and told him to get up. Told him that he was still needed, that it wasn't over yet. Told him that one day, Voldemort would be back, that one day Harry would grow up and want answers. Told him that it would get better, over time (though never leave him completely).

( _Get up, my boy._ )

And even as he didn't believe a word of it, Remus did what Dumbledore wanted of him. It seemed to him that that was all he had left.

At night, when it wasn't Sirius's cold feet waking him with a start but his own subconscious pleading futilely against reality, he staggered blindly into the bathroom, helpless with the nausea rolling through him, and the despair that, at twenty-two, he had outlived every single one of his friends, all dead at the hand of someone he thought he'd known (or at least understood) (and very possibly still loved anyway).

*

It helped, to keep moving. Being somewhere different each month staved off the _knowing_. Knowing that he had nothing to return to and everything to leave behind. It helped, on days when he was threatened with being overwhelmed, to be able to feel like he was just fading away into the background.

If Dumbledore hadn't insisted on staying in touch, he sometimes wondered if that's what might have actually happened. For the first time in eleven years, no one wanted anything from him (save evidence of his continued existence), and he had never felt more lost.

In Iceland, Sirius was a cold lump in the pit of his stomach when he awoke from the nightmares of laughter and Peter's screams.

In Sweden, Sirius was a choking in his throat each time before words came out.

In Bulgaria, Sirius was an ache as deep as the wolf in his blood, as insistent as the beating of his heart.

In Britain, Sirius was stalking the grounds of Hogwarts, and Remus told no one.

*

 _Harry is in danger,_ Dumbledore's letter said, _and I have need of a Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. It's time for you to come home, my boy._

So, after twelve years, Remus came, and tried not seize up every time someone mentioned Sirius's name, because he was thirty-four now and had very many more grey hairs than before and some sort of deficit he knew he could never make up to James's son.

Later, he told Harry over Butterbeer and chocolate, "You'll just -- exist. As an empty shell. And your soul is gone forever... lost. It's the fate that awaits Sirius Black." But part of him (the same part that still woke him shaking from dreams of secret kisses and the feel of another body fitting, warm and boneless, to his own) never quite accepted it. Had never quite accepted any of it.

*

"Where am I?" Remus whispered hoarsely, but the woman didn't speak English. It could have been Sweden, or Finland, or possibly even Russia - the icy landscape was endless and all-but sunless at this time of year, and so cold it was impossible to think of anything else. He had travelled for days without seeing a single dwelling. It had been his intention.

He was warm now -- almost a forgotten sensation -- and dim light was being cast into the small wood room by a smoky, spitting fire. Gritting his teeth he sat up and pushed his hostess away, reaching for his clothes. Her worried face swam in his vision as the world began to pitch to the right.

"Mum?" he asked, bewildered, as small hands prevented him from keeling over completely.

"Remus," his mother replied, "are you going to cry all day about nothing worse than a couple of grazed knees, or are you going to go out and have fun with your friends?"

"It's bleeding," Remus murmured. "Need a plaster."

A hand supported his head and coaxed him to drink something, and then he slept. He didn't dream, and when he woke he was warmed through and everything ached a little less. He unwrapped the bandages someone had carefully covered his wounds with, the skin already healed, red scars bright against his skin.

He got dressed and went back out into snow so thick it creaked to walk over; when he had woken, he had out reached for Sirius, and now the warmth inside was unbearable.

*

The Shack.

The Shack, and Remus didn't blink, didn't breath, and sprinted down the passageway with no thoughts beyond the faces of two boys he had once known.

The Shack, and an animal was squealing, and the children were terrified and Harry held his wand on a grown wizard like the malevolent ghost of his thirteen-year-old father.

The Shack, and part of Remus's world fell back into place with a thud that shook the ground.

The man was filthy, grey and decimated and really barely alive, except for the gleam in his eyes; sharp silvery eyes that shone through the matted years and as Remus bent, numb with disbelief, to help him up, something happened to him. Sparks shot up through his arms, down his body, and his flesh seared and shivered with it, visceral and violent. He stood clinging to Sirius, eyes squeezed tightly closed against the need to cry.

He stood clinging to Sirius as though there was no one else in the room, feeling so utterly alive that he knew he couldn't let go again. As if he'd ever had a choice.

(As if he'd ever wanted one).

*

"Remus? Remus?" The boy from the next bed stood at the break in the curtains, letting in moonlight from the window.

It fell across his face and Remus rubbed his eyes, though he hadn't been asleep. "Sirius? What is it?"

He seemed to hesitate (Remus wondered if he was poorly, or missed his mother tucking him in or something) then lifted his chin in resolve. "I'm cold, and I want to come in with you," he said, his tone demanding, though not quite as imperious as earlier at the sorting feast. He edged forward so that the curtain fell closed again behind him, and Remus saw that he still had dried-up little lumps of potato in his hair, and that he looked smaller, in just his pyjamas.

Remus stared at him for several seconds until Sirius sighed dramatically, rolling his eyes. He came over and lifted the corner of the duvet, climbed in and curled up on his side facing Remus, pressing his cold feet into Remus's shins. And Remus... after five years of ostracism, Remus suddenly found himself looking into a pair of bright grey eyes that gazed at him without judgment, without fear, and could only blink in wonder at the easy closeness.

There was silence for what seemed like ages, and Remus might have gone to sleep, opening his eyes to a touch, a cool finger running along his forehead, smoothing out his frown, and Sirius's eyes following his hand before withdrawing back under the covers.

"You don't mind, do you?" Sirius murmured drowsily, burrowing his feet deeper.

Remus didn't say no. Sirius had clearly never expected him to.


End file.
